The child in the cupboard
by Lylfenrys
Summary: Lestrade has found a strange puzzle for Sherlock and John. But what they found in that cellar is not exactly what they expected. They end up with a strange child on their hands. Can they prevent a terrorist attack and babysit at the same time ? (might contain some spoilers from season 1-3)
1. Chapter 1

_**My first story on FF, I might fumble... I still don't know where this story is going. I just need to get it out of my head to be able to concentrate on other projects.**_

 _ **I'm not a native English speaker and I'm not able to make the difference between british and american ways of speaking English, so please forgive me if you find too many "americanisms" in these, or if there are errors or wrongly used words. I'd be happy to correct them.**_

 _ **I don't own anything related to Sherlock TV show or Conan Doyle books. My original characters are my own.**_

* * *

The smell in the cave was unbearable. Sherlock followed Lestrade down the stairs, John just behind him. He looked disgusted, wrinkling his nose, but when he saw how John had put a handkerchief on his face, he smirked.

At last, they reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a low-ceiled room with a dirt floor. Bodies were lying around, having been here for at least a day, most likely two by the look of them, the doctor estimated. Blood had been drank by the earth but he could still see the dark marks around the corpses.

"Gun shot wounds," John stated after a quick examination.

Skerlock hadn't even given a close look.

"Pretty obvious crime, Lestrade, what am I doing here exactly?" he said, annoyed.

"It's not for the bodies I asked you to come," the officer said. "The reason is here."

He indicated a door on the other side of the room. Sherlock crossed the space in a few quick strides and stopped, transfixed on the doorstep to the next room. He then entered slowly, John on his heels but he stopped him with one hand.

"Stay away," Sherlock ordered without even looking at him.

Used to this treatment, John and Lestrade stayed on the doorstep of the cluttered room.

The end wall was covered with a huge map of London, and most of the walls were covered in notes, newspaper extracts, photographs. Code words and chemical formula were scribbled everywhere. In the center of the room, a huge table was taking almost the entire space and was also covered in all sorts of papers.

John had recognized the look on Sherlock's face. He was hooked. He was standing very still in the middle of the room, his eyes moving so fast it gave John the nausea. Then, he looked down and examined the floor. There wasn't any traces of blood here.

"Did you people entered here and messed up the evidences?" the consulting detective asked, looking at Lestrade and giving a dirty look at Donovan behind his shoulder. She scorned at him.

"No one came into that room when we discovered it. You're the first one to enter," Lestrade told him.

Satisfied, Sherlock smiled, he was cheerful now.

"Awesome. You might want to look for the man who was abducted here, most probably our chemist. He should still be alive as long as he can resist the torture and don't give his kidnappers what they want. He's about the same height as me, white, dark-brown haired, Slavic origins, he should be limping on his right leg, an old wound to the knee."

Lestrade gave his orders to his men, not bothering anymore to ask how Sherlock knew all that.

Skerlock turned around and continued to examine the floor. He turned around the table and frowned, looking at a small shabby closet in the corner. He was perplexed. It didn't fit.

"Those small footprints couldn't belong to a man, or even to a woman," he said aloud, taking to himself. "Maybe it was an animal, like a dog perhaps."

He approached the closet cautiously. The key was in the keyhole. It was locked. He listened carefully and heard a muffled noise inside. On the defensive, he opened the door, it creaked loudly.

"What?" asked John, ready to jump to his friend's help if needed. "What is it?"

Sherlock stared into the darkness. His piercing blue eyes met with a pair of terror-stricken light ones. A young child was crouched there, looking at him, her hands covering her mouth trying not to scream. She was the dirtiest human thing he had ever seen, and that was saying something. Her dark hair was caked with dust, her face grimed, the tears having drawn paler lines on her cheeks. Her nails where unkept, disgustingly black and some of them broken.

Transfixed, he continued his examination. Barefooted, the little girl was only wearing muddy and soiled jeans and a t-shirt which might have been white in another life. She was trembling out of cold as well as fear. Still standing, Sherlock continued his examination and growled in anger. He had seen the bruises all along her arms. The little girl started and whimpered on hearing him.

He crouched, and to his own surprise, he found himself extending his hand toward the child. She stayed motionless, still gazing at him. Through him even. He moved his fingers in front of her face and she didn't budge, her eyes fixed. She was blind.

"I'm a friend, my name is Sherlock," he said. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

The girl started again and moaned.

"I'm a friend," he repeated cautiously, "you can trust me, I'm going to touch you now. Don't be afraid. It will be alright..."

He made a move to take her wrist in his hand, it was so tiny he was afraid he would break it if he touched it. But when his fingers closed around her arm, she began to scream hysterically and struggle to get out of his grip.

John ran into the room, his eyes wide in disbelief as he took in the small child hiding in the closet. Sherlock continued to wrestle with the little girl and eventually managed to get a good grab on her without getting bitten. He lifted her easily, she was light as a feather, clearly underfed. Now that she was out of the closet, she began to kick him with her feet. Not even trying to keep the disgust out of his face, he grasped her in his arm, holding her against his chest, to prevent the kicking.

"It's alright, it's alright," he kept repeating reassuringly in her ear in a low voice, ignoring John's incredulous stare. He shot him a poisonous look. Was he not allowed to show kindness?

After a minute or so of wrestling, she calmed down, shivering in his arms. He put her down and, removing his coat, he draped it around her frail shoulders. It was already dirty anyway. She stood there, gazing into the nothingness, listening hard.

"What's this?" asked Lestrange.

"A child obviously," Sherlock answered sarcastically. Lestrange shot him an annoyed look.

"She spent the last couple of days in this closet," said John who was inspecting the small space where the child was a moment ago. He retrieved a small empty bottle and wraps. "There was some food and water here."

The girl began shivering violently. John put a hand on her forehead but she jerked out of his reach, clinging to Sherlock.

"She has hypothermia, we need an ambulance. She is clearly malnourished and was abused," the doctor went on.

He looked outraged. Sherlock quite agreed with him. Why was that child kept in a cave with a bunch of terrorists? He looked around him. The answer was probably on these walls. He tried to detach himself from the child but failed. She just wouldn't let him go. Sighing and frowning, he picked her up again in his arms.

He began walking around the room, mumbling to himself and trying to make sense of the mayhem on the walls. He was in the middle of reading a formula when he noticed an error. It was a strange error, it looked deliberate but was very subtle. Mechanically, he read it out loud, correcting it in the process. Surprised, he sensed the girl tensing in his arms. He watched her carefully. She was very still, fighting the shivering and her clanking teeth, listening hard, looking more and more worried.

He turned his attention back to the formula but this time, he kept an eye on the girl while reading it. He found various mistakes and each time he corrected them, the girl tensed, while when he ignored them, she relaxed.

"What kind of chemical is it?" asked Lestrade.

"Some kind of poison," came Sherlock's calm answer, his eyes still riven on the child's face. When she heard his answer, she clearly winced. "I knew it!" he exclaimed loudly, making everyone jump. "You understood everything I said, didn't you?" he said to the girl, ignoring royally the puzzled looks he got from John and Lestrade. "What's your name, girl?"

The child blushed so hard it was visible under the grime.

"Latia," she rasped in a small voice barely audible.

"You're the one who found these formula, aren't you?" Sherlock went on.

"Come on Sherlock, what are you saying?" objected John, "She's barely six years old, seven at the most, how could she?"

Sherlock shot him a disdainful look. "I could at that age. You wouldn't understand."

He ignored the hurt expression on his friend's face, too preoccupied by the strange child in his arms. He continued, addressing Latia like the rest of the world didn't exist. "You made the mistakes on purpose. So they wouldn't be able to create this poison. That's why you've been beaten, they realised you were trying to deceive them. The men who came, they took your guardian, the one who wrote this, thinking he was the chemist." He indicated the notes on the wall. "He protected you by locking you into the closet. That means they didn't know you are behind the formula."

He looked up at Lestrade. "She must remain secret. No one must learn we found her. Is there a back door?"

The officer, despite his surprise, took the matter in his hands.

"There is a window upstairs, accessing a backyard. I can send a car..."

"No!" Sherlock cut him. "We'll take a cab. Make sure everything here is sent to Baker Street. Try not to mess it up too much..."

And without waiting for an answer or an objection, he rocketed out of the room, the child in his arms cradled in his coat, her face covered by the collar. John followed him closely. They easily found the window, the ground was several feet bellow. Without hesitating, Sherlock opened it with one hand and jumped. He crossed the little unkept garden and found a closed rusty door.

"Let me," said John behind him. He circled him and firmly pushed the door with his shoulder, which opened with a crash. He stepped aside, showing the way to Sherlock with one hand.

"I could have done that..." remarked Sherlock acidly.

"You could have hurt her."

"Of course not."

John gave him a look, the one saying "stop arguing and being a dick". Sherlock shrugged and leaded the way across the threshold. They were in a narrow alley perpendicular to the main road. They were hidden from view by rows of dustbins. They crouched and headed the other way, reaching the next street without being seen.

They had to walk for several minutes before finding a cab. Once inside, John asked to take a closer look at their young charge. During their walk, Latia had drifted into sleep. Sherlock opened the coat reluctantly, first because it was blocking most of the smell, and second, because he felt strangely protective of the child, possessive even. He watched John as he took her pulse and examined her more closely than he could back inside the cave. He really didn't like the worried expression his friend had just now.

"What?" Sherlock ended up asking, not able to contain his anxiety any longer.

"I don't like that sleep, she passed out from hypoglycaemia. She's dehydrated too. But thanks to your coat and your own body heat, she has recovered a nearly normal temperature."

John readjusted the coat around the girl. Sherlock clenched his teeth and didn't answer. He turned to the window, watching London streets slide alongside them, willing them to go faster. He really didn't like John's expression right now.

The doctor held her wrist the whole ride to St Barts.


	2. Chapter 2

When they arrived, Sherlock nearly got out of the cab before it stopped, leaving to John the detail to pay the driver. He went through the morgue entrance and found Molly in the usual lab.

"I need your help here Molly," he said urgently.

She looked up to him and when she noticed his burden, he saw alarm in her eyes.

"It's not a corpse!" he explained urgently. "It's a child. She needs a bath. Do you have a bathtub down here?"

"Sherlock!" John was running after him in the corridor. "What do you think you are doing here! She needs medical attention, you need to bring her upstairs."

"They don't have an A&E department here anymore, we would just bother them," Sherlock answered calmly. "And you will do as her 'medical attention'. So? Do you have a bathtub?"

Molly lead the way without question to an old infirmary on the highest floor with only one bed and a bathroom. Sherlock put the girl on the bed while Molly opened the tap of the bath and John turned on the heater.

"She needs to wake up before we put her in the tub. Molly, can you get an IV kit from downstairs, and some rehydration serum?" John asked, before he indicated the concentration he needed. He started rubbing down the girl gently, trying to wake her up. "We should have gotten to an A&E. I'm not a specialist, Sherlock."

"You will do fine," Sherlock reassured him.

He looked through various drawers and finally found a pair of scissors and a towel. They cut her clothes instead of trying to remove them and then, they rolled her in the towel and in the coat again.

Both men had noticed the bruises were even worse on her torso and legs. John was vibrating out of outrage. Anger was burning a hole in Sherlock's insides, he couldn't say a word. Some part of his mind, the rational one, was finding quite surprising that he felt so concerned about that unknown child.

Molly came back exactly at the same time Latia woke up. She immediately panicked, but Sherlock's voice came back and upon hearing his voice, she calmed down and listened.

"These are friends, Latia," he said. "John is a doctor, he'll take good care of you. And Molly will help us. Say hello, Molly," he ordered.

Perplexed, Molly obeyed, waving timidly at the girl.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Don't bother waving, Molly. She's blind."

"What?" John waved his hand in front of Latia's eyes. She didn't blink and went on staring straight in front of her.

Ignoring the confused look on Molly's face, Sherlock took the IV kit from her hands and gave it to John. He then retreated to the back of the room, letting his friend take the lead. John was talking gently, reassuring the little girl and explaining to her what he was going to do. She was listening intently. Molly put down the rest of the supplies she had collected, some extra linen and a small hospital gown, and she approached the bed and helped John put the IV in. She gasped when they unrolled her from the coat and she saw the bruises.

Sherlock let them carry her in the bathtub. He watched from afar as Molly held her head over the water while John washed her gently. He recognised the expert hand of a father used to bathe his new-born daughter. Where she was clean, Sherlock could see her skin, so white it was nearly translucent. No sun for years, part of his mind deduced.

"Her hair is too tangled," Molly said. "We'll never be able to comb it."

Sherlock put the scissors beside the bathtub. "Cut it then," he said. "I'll be in the lab, come to me when you're done." And he left without another word.

John and Molly were left staring at each other. They didn't talk, though John could feel Molly's curiosity. The little girl was totally passive in their hands and let them wash her from head to toes. After a first bath, they removed her from the water and sat her on the bed rolled in a towel. John gave the scissors to Molly with a pointed look.

"That's such a shame," she sighed, weighting the black mass of hair the girl had on her head. "They could be so beautiful."

"They will grow back," mumbled John. He was examining closely each wound, disinfecting them and checking for infection.

"I know..."

And she began cutting the dreadlocks, one by one. Latia didn't even flinch.

John was keeping an eye on the girl's face. He wondered how she could be so calm after seeing her in that cave, wrestling like a frightened kitten with Sherlock. Now that he had time to think about it, he was surprised by the way his friend had behaved with her, so protective, so caring. Sherlock usually didn't care about strangers. And he couldn't stand children. He would let John or the police look after the children if they happened to meet some during a case. And yet, there she was, the little girl who seemed to have touched some sensitive nerve in the cold and stoical man.

Molly cut his train of thoughts. "She'll need a true hairdresser, I'm quite bad at that," she said.

John looked up from the girl's feet, he was checking for injuries. Her hair was spiked oddly, the strands uneven. Latia lifted her hand and passed it through her short hair, feeling their length. And to John's bewilderment, she smiled. Molly hadn't seen the smile, she was staring at the girl's nails, horrified.

"I'll be right back!" she said before storming out of the room. She came back with her own manicure kit.

"What's Sherlock doing?" John asked her while she began the delicate task to cut the girl's nails.

"I'm not sure, I think he was in his mind palace, he didn't notice me. But my manicure kit was in evidence on the table, he searched my purse..."

John smiled at this obvious disregard for her privacy. This was the Sherlock he knew.

Once they were done, they gave her another quick bath, washing her hair properly this time. They dressed her in the hospital gown and put her to bed.

John left Latia with Molly while he went looking for Sherlock. He found him in the lab, sitting on one of the stools, lost in his thoughts. His coat was in a plastic bag near the door. He couldn't suppress a smile seeing that, his friend was always so fussy about his coat.

"Sherlock?"

The man didn't stir.

"Sherlock!" John repeated louder.

"Hmm?"

"She's clean, if you're interested to know."

Sherlock opened his eyes. "Good."

"I didn't find any badly infected wound, nothing serious, but we need to take her to some specialized ward now. She needs a specific diet to recover."

To John's surprise, Sherlock got up from his seat and gestured to the door. "I'll come with you."

"Really?"

Sherlock tilted his head to the side, surprised. "Of course, I don't want her out of my sight too long. She's the most important piece of that wonderful puzzle we found this morning."

John sighed. "I should have known you had an ulterior motive..."

"What are you talking about, John?" Sherlock said casually, picking up his coat before closing the door of the lab behind him. "I found her, I feel responsible."

John scoffed. "You don't feel responsible for anyone, Sherlock. You barely feel responsible for your own actions."

Annoyed, Sherlock opened his mouth to object but closed it without retaliating. John noticed it was the second time this day that his friend let an argument down without having the last word. This was unheard of. It worried him.

"Let me give a few phone calls," said John. "I'll have an ambulance really as soon as possible."

Sherlock ignored him and left him, heading for the infirmary where the girls were. John called the Children's hospital. Then he went to the St Barts ambulance station to ask for a vehicle. He ended up calling his wife, explaining the matter to her, while waiting for an available car.

When the car was ready, he sent a message to Sherlock and waited. They appeared a few minutes later, the girl in Sherlock's arms, cradled in a blanket, and Molly is holding his coat in its plastic bag.

Sherlock jumped into the ambulance and put the girl on the cot. He then tried to close the door of the vehicle.

"Wait! What are you doing?" John asked, stopping his move. "I'm coming too."

"No need. Please, drop my coat at the dry cleaner's." And he slammed the door in his face.

John was fuming while watching the ambulance turn around the corner.

"I'll do it if you want," said Molly behind him.

"Err, what?" John asked, confused.

She lifted the bag with the coat.

"Oh, yes, thank you, yes, that'd be lovely," he answered distracted. And he left her, looking for a cab.


	3. Chapter 3

When Sherlock arrived to the hospital, he regretted leaving John behind. The staff was asking all kinds of questions he really didn't care about.

"What's her name? What's yours? Where does she come from? Are you a parent? Who's her doctor? Do you have an appointment?"

His temper rising, he tried to explain they had found her in a cave this morning and the nurse of the admission eyed him suspiciously. She at last accepted to give Latia a room. He put her in a wheelchair but then some nurse noticed the bruises on her arms and legs and called security. They forbid him to go with her and whatever he tried, he was stopped. He made such a racket that they ended up menacing to call the police.

"Oh please, do it! Tell them I'm Sherlock Holmes!" he shouted, furious.

"What do you think you are doing, Sherlock!" said a voice behind him. "This is a hospital, shut the hell up!"

Sherlock turned on his heels. "Oh, you were quick," he told Lestrade who was panting and red in the face.

"I have been looking for you the whole morning, why didn't you answer your bloody phone?" The officer was pissed. "You're lucky John called me, he knew you'd make trouble."

It was John's turn to enter the ward. He took in the situation immediately. But before he could get near the counter, the admission nurse exploded.

"Who ARE you people? I am calling the police right now!"

"I AM the police," shouted Lestrade, putting his card under her nose. He then realized he was making as much noise as Sherlock and calmed down immediately. "I'm sorry, please excuse me. What's happening here? This girl must not be unattended and needs protection. Let Mr Holmes go with her."

"But she's been beaten, it's the procedure, we have to separate her from her guardian until the social services..."

"I'm not her guardian!" Sherlock exclaimed. "And I certainly didn't beat her, you stupid woman! I found her in this state, though she's clean now... You could thank us for that." The nurse was out of word from outrage so Sherlock went on with his tirade. "You just assumed without knowing anything, how pitiful."

"What happened to her hair, by the way?" Lestrade cut him. He was now inspecting Latia.

"We had to cut it to clean it," said John, intervening in the conversation for the first time. He then turned to the nurse with his best smile on. She eyed him with mistrust.

"I'm Dr John Watson and I called earlier for an admission for Latia," he indicated the girl who was looking terrified on her wheelchair. "She spent the last couple of days locked in a cupboard with little food and water, she has been abused for many months, most likely years. She needs to be checked for broken bones and more urgently, she needs to be fed and rehydrated. What she doesn't need, is all this drama..."

He waited patiently for an answer, with an innocent smile on his face. Everyone in the corridor who was looking at him turned their attention to the nurse.

"Err, right, ok," she stuttered, red in the face. She checked her computer. "Indeed, I found your file. I will have specialists with you as soon as possible. But what about _him_?" she whispered, indicating Sherlock with a wince.

"Don't worry about him," John said before Sherlock could react. "He's harmless. He barks loud but he doesn't bite."

Lestrade snorted and Sherlock gave them both a disdainful look. Now that John had the situation in hand, he was getting bored.

"Shall we go?" John asked, taking the handles of the wheelchair.

"Wait, what's her surname ?" the nurse insisted. "I need one for our records. And for the health insurances."

"We don't know, I'm sorry," said John.

"Holmes," said Sherlock, intervening suddenly. "Put Holmes as her surname."

He wasn't exactly sure why he'd done that. And this was sure to trigger Mycroft's network if he wasn't already aware of their morning discovery. He didn't care. All he wanted was to get moving, to get Latia cared for and to carry on with the investigation. John eyed him with a soften expression he really didn't like but he ignored it.

Once he was sure Latia was in good hands, he left her with John. She still hadn't said another word, since telling him her name. Sherlock had begun to doubt his deduction. Maybe he was mistaken, maybe she wasn't some genius child. Maybe her reaction to his reading was a coincidence. The voice of Mycroft in his head was stern, 'there is no such thing as a coincidence.'

"Oh shut up," Sherlock said aloud, earning himself a surprised look from the driver of the cab he was in.

When he arrived at 221b Baker Street, the police had not delivered the content of the cave as he'd asked. He texted Lestrade.

" _Where's my wall puzzle ? – SH_ "

Lestrade's answer came pretty quickly. " _In Scotland Yard, you moron, they're evidence !_ "

Sherlock sighed. He could either go to the station and have to bear with Donovan and Anderson breathing down his neck and polluting his thoughts, or he could try to work from memory. The perspective of being alone in his mind palace far outshined the trip to Lestrade's office. It would have to do for now.

He stretched out on the sofa and concentrated. The map of London materialized in front of his eyes. It was the easiest piece to remember, he already knew it by heart. Bit by bit, extracts of papers, some of which he had read before himself, began to complete the map, and then notes written by hand, chemical formula. Soon, the whole room was recreated in the meanders of his mind.

There where strategic points noted all around London but they were strange locations for planning an attack. None of them where places of significance, nor crowded places.

"It means they need discretion," remarked Sherlock, talking to himself.

He looked around the room and shuffled the papers on the central table. There were other maps. One of them caught his eye. It had the logo of the Thames Water company. They supplied three fourth of London drinkable water. He couldn't see the map, but it had to be the supply piping system, or something related. He superposed the maps he knew over the streets of London on the wall, and noticed that each point noted was between a pumping site and a major water tank.

"They're after London water supply. They will poison the water !"

But something wasn't right. The poison, once the formula was corrected, wasn't supposed to be dissolved in water, it couldn't work. It would float like oil. He didn't know exactly why but he felt a little proud of Latia at the moment. And there she was, sitting on a stool in his mind palace.

"Clever girl!" he greeted her enthusiastically. "Will you talk to me here ?"

The girl eyed him without any expression on her face.

"Erm, apparently not..."

Something was still bothering him. He looked around the room. Something wasn't right. Then the girl pointed to the door.

"In the other room ? Why ?"

He walked to the door and opened it but it was going nowhere. He hadn't committed the details to his mind as well as he had for the puzzle room, as he called it. He tried to remember. Six bodies, their weapons scattered around them, they didn't ever had time to use them. They were all dressed in dark clothes, nothing fancy. Except one. One had a lab coat on, and a bullet through his forehead, execution style.

"They didn't kidnap the chemist! They dragged him to the other room and executed him! How could I miss that? But why? Does that mean they had everything they needed? Do they have a chemist of their own? One who may see the mistakes in Latia's formula. And why leave all that for the police to find? Even someone like Anderson would realize quite quickly that they targeted the water supplies."

He looked at Latia, she was still watching him intently.

"They don't care, do they?" he told her. "Because they will use it differently."

She nodded.

"Do you know how?" he asked her.

She nodded again.

"Can you tell me?"

This time, she shook her head.

"Why?"

She didn't react. He began to pace back and forth in front of her.

"Why don't you want to tell me? Wait, that's not the question I asked. I said 'can you'. Do you want to help me ?"

This time she smiled.

He stared at her. He didn't know she could smile. How could she smile here in his mind palace, he had never seen her smile. He noticed she also looked much more well fed here too. Her hair had grown back and was delicately braided. She was wearing a pink shirt and a plaited skirt, white socks and pretty little black shoes. She looked like a doll.

And suddenly, she was a doll, with dead eyes and plastic legs. He jerked away and came back to reality.

* * *

 _ **I have another chapter in the oven right now, nearly finished. I will be slower to update after that.**_


	4. Chapter 4

He had received several texts on his phone. One was from John.

" _She panicked during the exams, we put her under sedation. She'll sleep till tomorrow. — John_ "

"Idiots, I needed to talk to her!" exclaimed Sherlock.

He frowned at the next text.

" _I took a blood sample from Latia earlier, I need to talk to you about it. — Molly_ "

He called her directly.

"Molly? What's the matter with Latia's blood? And why did you take that sample in the first place?"

"Sherlock, can you come to St Bart's? I don't want to talk about it over the phone."

"Why are you whispering?"

"Please, come." And she hung up.

Perplexed, he grabbed his spare coat and ran out. It was night already, he had spent a lot more time in his mind palace than he thought. When he arrived in St Bart's, he noticed a long black car parked near the door. Suspicious, he used the back entrance, the one leading to the morgue. Some security looking dude was keeping watch down the stairs leading to the labs.

He took a minute to think. He had had Molly over the phone fifteen minutes ago, she was whispering, hiding, probably from these guys. Where? She said she was in St Bart's, but obviously, she wasn't in the biology lab anymore. Where would he hide if he was in her place? The answer came quickly, the roof.

He took the corridor on his right and crossed the entire building. He eventually found unmonitored stairs and ran up to the last floor, not bothering with the elevators. He reached the roof without being followed. Molly was waiting for him, a file held tight against her chest.

"I'm sorry Sherlock, I made a huge mistake," she began.

She was shivering, her eyes wide with worry. He grabbed her by the shoulders.

"What happened?" Sherlock asked. "Do you know these guys? I saw them downstairs. What are they after?"

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," she repeated. "I shouldn't have meddled in your personal life." And she gave him the file, her hands shaking.

Sherlock looked from her to the file with surprise. "What do you mean, my personal life?" he said, taking the file.

"John asked me an analysis of her blood, but I also did a DNA search, for fun. I thought Latia looked like you with her short hair. I triggered something... Well, your DNA triggered something anyway. Fifteen minutes later, these guys arrived and erased everything. I was on the roof texting you and had that file with me. It's the only copy I could save. They took my blood sample."

Sherlock frowned. He could smell Mycroft hand in this. But why? He opened the file and read it under the security light. The first sheet was a toxicology analysis. Molly had found several traces of different tranquilizers and psychotropic substances. It was quite the cocktail, maybe even the reason the girl had gone blind. She must have been a handful to handle for her captors.

The next sheet was the DNA results. It was a comparison between his and Latia's samples. And there, in the middle of the page, the word 'RELATED' was printed in big black letters. Sherlock's mind went blank. For several minutes, he just stared at the page. Molly was liquefying in front of him.

"I'm so sorry, Sherlock, I shouldn't have done that..." she begged, big silent tears in her eyes.

Sherlock lifted his hand to make her shup up but it had shaken him out of his stupor. He took the time to read the results thoroughly. The DNA matched with a very high percentage, one only found in directly related people, siblings or parent and child, it was too high for her to be his niece, and he was quite certain his parents didn't have another child in the later years. It left him with only one possibility, Latia was his daughter.

"How? When? Who?" he stammered.

His mind was racing, calculating where he had been and what he had done in the approximate time of Latia's conception. The list of women he had known was fairly short. There was that one time in Russia that matched the period. He had been drugged and that girl had kept him away from his objective with very persuasive arguments... The girl had disappeared the next day and he had never heard of her later.

He swore. Obviously, someone had noticed the baby girl, someone knew she was his, why would she be in England otherwise. Someone had taken advantage of her, of her talents, to turn her into a terrorist. Oh! How wicked this was. Sherlock Holmes' six-year-old daughter, a terrorist. The revelation was overwhelming, he grabbed his hair, like trying to prevent his brain from jumping out of his skull.

"Oh! They knew! They left her down there in that cellar on purpose! They knew I would find her! They knew we would have her DNA tested at one time or another." He paused for one second. "Who would go to such an extend to hurt me, through a child? Who would let a child starve in a cupboard for days? Maybe she was even supposed to die in that cupboard..."

He heard footsteps behind the door. Sherlock reacted quickly. He pushed Molly out of the way and when the man emerged on the roof, he punched him in the jugular. The man collapsed at his feet. He then grabbed Molly's hand and dashed for the emergency stairs. They rattle down the metallic stairs and reached the street without being caught. They jumped in a taxi just in time to see, through the back windshield of the cab, three men in black suits rushing out of St Bart's and looking for them.

They went to the Children's Hospital. Without surprise, two men in black were already keeping watch in front of Latia's bedroom.

"You should stay outside," Sherlock told Molly. "I'm going to have a row at my dear older brother. Trust me, you don't want to be there... You should go home. Thank you for your help today."

She gave him a feeble smile and left.

When Sherlock entered the room, John was still here, on the chair beside the bed, watching over the girl protectively. He gave him a questioning look. Mycroft was standing in front of the window, his back to the door. Sherlock could see his brother's frustration in the way his shoulders were tensed. He smiled. Looked like John had won the first row.

"You may leave now, Dr Watson," said Mycroft coolly in place of greetings. "Sherlock and I have some family business to settle."

"Oh, come on Mycroft," said Sherlock playfully. "John is as good as family, you know that." He turned to John who was now standing. "Stay."

Confused, John looked from one brother to the other, but he didn't make a move to leave the room.

Mycroft sighted and turned around. His attention was focused on Sherlock.

"What have you done this time?" he said, his eyes narrowing.

"Do you need a picture, brother?" taunted Sherlock.

"I'm not playing, Sherlock!"

Sherlock's face hardened. "I'm not playing either. Someone went to some rare and cruel extend to hurt me through that child. I'm not letting that go. You weren't there this morning. You didn't see the state she was in. They knew she was there, they left her down there to starve!"

John gasped. None of the brothers spared him the slightest attention.

"So? What's your plan now?" Mycroft asked seriously.

"I'll stop them of course."

Mycroft scoffed. "And how do you plan to do that while babysitting ?"

"I can do both."

"You? Look at you! You can't even take care of yourself, Sherlock!"

"You're the one to talk. Do you think you can do better? You're even more inappropriate to raise a child than I am. I've seen it first hand."

Mycroft was loosing his cool, which was exactly Sherlock's intention. But John, who hadn't uttered a word since the beginning of this conversation, was faster to intervene.

"Boys! Lower your voices and calm down! This is a hospital. What are you talking about anyway? Who is raising who? Sherlock, you don't plan to take guardianship of Latia, do you?"

John looked quite confounded by that idea. Sherlock felt a little bit hurt by this lack of faith from his friend. Of course, Mycroft smirked.

"See, Sherlock? Even John thinks it's a bad idea."

"Hey! Wait a minute, I didn't say that," insisted John. "I'm just asking for an explanation because I'm lost here."

Sherlock gave him the file and waited for him to read it. He was interested to see his friend's reaction to the news. He wasn't disappointed. John's eyes widened like saucers, and he sat down heavily. Sherlock couldn't help but think that his friend took the news even more badly than he did. To his surprise though, John began to chuckle. After a few seconds, he was openly laughing. Both brothers looked at each other, not knowing how to react to this.

"Ah ah, I don't believe it!" John was hiccoughing now. "Did you really inflicted another Holmes to this world, Sherlock? That's incredible!"

Coming from John, it felt like a compliment.

"Looks like it," Sherlock said with a rather smug smile on his face. "Molly tested her blood as you asked her to. The DNA test was her idea. By the way, Mycroft, your guys frightened the hell out of her. You should apologize. Don't do that to her again."

"Do I have to fear the apparition of another of your offsprings, Sherlock ? I will remember to ask her politely next time," his brother ironized.

Sherlock shrugged and turned his attention back to John. "Would you have a look at the toxicology report? Molly found more drugs in her system than in the worst East Side junkie... They drugged her to keep her docile."

John gave a quick look at the second form in the file. "She had all this shit in her system? No wonder I found her a little funky... It's not docile, it's apathetic."

"Or hysterical."

"That too."

"Do you think there is a chance she will get her sight back once she gets rid of all of these?"

John looked at Sherlock with something like pity in his eyes. "I cannot know. I don't even know why she's blind in the first place. She might have been born that way."

"She wasn't. She used to see before."

"How do you know that?"

"She focuses her gaze on things she hears as if she could see them. Someone who have never seen in his life don't do that. Not with such accuracy. Her blindness is quite recent. They did it to her. Maybe to punish her, or to prevent her from escaping."

Mycroft cleared his throat. "May I?" he asked, extending his hand toward the file John was finished reading. He read attentively both reports, his mouth fixated in a pained rictus.

Sherlock watched his brother more closely. The man had a strange emotion on his face. All smugness and disdain was gone. He recognized anger and disgust, but they were not directed at his brother. He was hurt, Sherlock realized, the same way himself felt hurt by this whole affair. Mycroft had just realized the amount of suffering Latia had gone through. Sherlock's daughter. His own niece.

"These guys are insane," Mycroft eventually uttered.

"And they have in their possession a new kind of poison," added Sherlock. "And a mean to spread it. I still need to figure out what that is, because it won't be through the drinkable water network, as the puzzle suggested."

"What else do you know?"

"It must be some kind of embedded terrorist network. The men we found dead in the cellar had one purpose : to raise the child, if you could call that raise, and have her create that chemical weapon, using any coercive measure necessary. Once it was done, the main cell eliminated them, letting Latia to die in the cupboard, expecting me to find her, dead or alive, they didn't care."

"I'll need to do some research on these terrorists. What about Latia, Sherlock, when and where did _that_ happened?"

"Russia, seven years ago. You know about that case, it was one of yours. The mother is the prostitute who drugged me."

Mycroft had recovered and was now in all business mode. He crossed the room and opened the door. "I'll have people guarding her until this whole case is closed. Don't argue," he lifted a bossy finger at his brother. "Good night Dr Watson, Sherlock."

And he disappeared.

Sherlock looked at John. His friend had all his emotions written on his face. The horror of what he had just heard, but also some fondness when he crossed his gaze.

"I can't believe you have a daughter," John eventually said.

Sherlock tried to smile but he knew he wasn't very convincing. He felt he needed his friend's support there, more than ever. He was lost, and John was the only person he would admit this to.

"I really don't know what I'll do with her," he said, and it felt so true.

"That's fatherhood summed up in one sentence, Sherlock," his friend answered with a kind smile, patting him on the shoulder.

Sherlock scoffed.

"I need to go home now," John said, putting his coat on. "Mary is waiting for me. Shall I tell her? She'll be so excited."

"Of course, please, tell her. I'll stay here tonight and keep an eye on Latia. I've got some serious thinking to do anyway. And I need to text Lestrade about what I discovered," Sherlock settled in the chair beside the bed. "Give my love to Mary."

John stopped at the door.

"By the way, when did you decide to take care of your daughter yourself?" asked John.

Sherlock smirked. "When Mycroft suggested I couldn't do it, of course."


End file.
